Primary

I'm never quite sure what my kid has said when other teachers come out of the Primary room giggling...

Teacher: What's your favorite Primary song?

Garrett: Radioactive

Me: {:/

Teacher: Lynneah, where do you sleep?

Lynneah: IN TRASH CANS!
Later at home...

Me: Lynneah, where do you sleep?

Lynneah: IN THE VAN! 

Ummmm, apparently we're homeless and sleeping in trash cans and the van?

All those hours and hours of speech, special, tuition based, language focused pre-school, and work at home to teach her how to organize and retrieve her vocabulary and learn to talk has definitely paid off...or somethin'.

Sweet Little Monster

That Lincoln of ours is trouble...lots of funny, naughty, sneaky, scary trouble. I'll have to go work in a high school someday so I can know what the kids that age are up to and try to keep that Lincoln out of it. He's a little sponge and just picks things up that we've never directly taught...very new experience for us. His earned term of endearment is "Devil Child". He's always thinking and planning...

We've got several dear friends having such heartbreaking times right now and have added them in our prayers. We gave a short little explaination to the kids about what they were struggling with then suggested a few ideas that they might want to bless them with. From there it's up to the kids. These kids have been very faithful in remembering all of our friends and their families and their doctors in each prayer offered. It does my heart good to hear them care so much for the people in our lives.

Tonight Lincoln offered the prayer. He remembered everyone we've been praying for and specifically requested strength, comfort, guidance, etc depending of who he was talking about. 

Then he said,"Please bless our baby to be born ok, and not get any infections, and not die." :'{

Obviously some very very sad things have/continue to happen with several of our dear friends.

I always wonder if I should keep it quiet and protect them or allow them the opportunity to learn to pray for others. After tonight I still wonder, but was deeply touched that he cares so much about all the people that have touched our lives over the years, and able to then turn concern to his own immediate family.

When he's not getting into trouble he's such a deep thinking, concerned, caring little boy.

Semi-related, Gabriel has also been so faithful in remembering those we love in his prayers. He asks for updates before praying so he can make sure to "ask for the right kind of blessings for them".

He also always expresses gratitude that a new baby is coming to our family. I'm so happy to hear that from him, not every 9 year old boy would feel that way. He has such a good heart.

Little Garrett who spends most of his time in his own little world has even been consistently faithful in remembering those that need help. Thinking beyond is own immediate needs is huge and makes me so happy to see.

The Grand Finale

While debating if there really was just one more...one more came. This is it; so I wanted to do something fun to tell the kids what the finale would be. Stephen came up with the great idea to take them out to dessert and work with the restaurant to color it. Chili's was great and completely willing to help us surprise them.

Most of the them thought it was a girl, but WANTED a boy. It would be so much fun to end with using all those cute girly things we waited so many years to get, but I had a very clear impression there was one more boy right after Lincoln was born (it's nagged at me over all the years)...then those cute girls came and threw us for a loop...this is him.

We told them to watch for the dessert...

Blue was a boy...Pink was a girl.

It arrived!!

Garrett was SUPER excited! 

! B L U E !

! Y A H O O ! 

 They're all excited (well, the ones old enough to know what's going on) which is so heart warming. We asked what they thought about it and Gabriel said, "I just wanted another kid." Lincoln said, "Stinky! Because he's going to have to share my room and he'll drool and put all my stuff in his mouth." He will share his room...and probably right on the drooling part too. ;-D Garrett just really wanted another boy. Lynneah is just confused, she's asked if he'll get cut out, and can't figure out where his is. Just this week the lump (bumps are only on number 1 or 2...3 if you're lucky, beyond that it's full on lump)  has definitely become obvious so she'll figure it out soon...maybe. Kenzie's such a little Mama, but also the baby of the family *BIG TIME* and used to exclusive rights to Mommy for a couple hours a day. Poor girl's in for a really rude awakening.

So far everything looks good, and has come back ok, despite my official "advanced maternal age". However, Lynneah and a couple of her brothers did a pretty good job of teaching us that those pre-birth screenings are a nice thought, but don't mean much after they arrive.

Due on Gabriel's birthday.

Had lots of cute girl names...nothin' in the boy realm.

It's a What?

Me: What is it?

Lynneah: A pi-na-ta!

Me: A piñata??

Lynneah: Yeah, a pi-na-ta!!

Me: Nooo, it's not a piñata. What is it?

Lynneah: What is it? (When she starts parroting she doesn't understand.)

Me: It's a scarecrow.

Lynneah: Yeah it's a scarecwow. {pause} Poooor scarecwow he so sad.

Me: Why is he sad?

Lynneah: Because he scared. {pause} He has a fwower on his weg.

The fact that I was able to have this funny conversation and she didn't sound like Boo from Monster's Inc is huge!

Hmmm, is she growing up in the southwest? Funny girl. I didn't even know she knew the word piñata.

We've still got *so* much cognitive ground to make up with her, but she's finally making progress, and we're so happy to see it. Her speech therapist can't believe they didn't find anything on her MRI considering what she displays in therapy sessions every week. 

We were able to get her into a gold-plated language development pre-school that has her immersed in language development activities 5 mornings a week to try and get her receptive language up and running. Even after they were able to find some scholarship money, and allowing me to do volunteer work around the school for an additional small reduction; it's making our budget cry its self to sleep every night. The placement is working though, in addition to once a week one-on-one therapy, so our accounts will just have to cry themselves to sleep till she goes to Kindergarten! I'm so glad she's young and gets excited to see Mom at school rather than older and embarrassed that she's the poor kid whose Mom is doing a work trade to keep her in the good school. Again I'm humbled and have deep empathy for another group of people in the world. You'd think I'd learn my lesson already, so I didn't have to keep finding myself here!

Once kids start school there is no wiggle room for "catching up". She has to be ready when she goes in. Her October birth nearly killed me going through the ENTIRE summer pregnant... *now* I am so grateful she's a fall birthday and has to wait an extra year to go to school. Any time I'm feeling picked on/overwhelmed/lost/unsure of how to proceed/hesitant about if "it" (whatever it is) will work out/that screaming voice in every mother's head chanting "you stink and a complete failure" gets too loud, something comes along to remind me that He has a plan and knows what He dropped on us. It doesn't make it easier at all, but at least I'm reassured that there is a master plan. She was a really tough timing surprise...then I found out she was due in OCTOBER (busy time of year, usually still HOT as...well we'll leave it at HOT) and I felt very picked on. Well, our Heavenly Father also knew he was sending her to us with her insides not quite assembled correctly, unbeknownst to us, and that she'd need an extra year of early intervention before she started school. He also knew that if He threw in one more *seriously?!?* surprise really close to her she'd be able to grow up buffered between her big brother and little sister. 

Yes, there is a plan... 

"WOW, AAAWWWEEE-SSOOMMMEEE"

Some Monsoon storms are just way cooler than others.

Although, I'm pretty sure the owner (not us) of this trampoline disagrees. This one neighborhood had a ton of damage. Two houses down from this a huge tree what laying ON the house. The kids thought this was a great detour to take on the way home from school. :)

Nursery!!

 

Guess

Who

went to nursery??

MEEEEE!!!!

In all the years we've been having these cute little things Stephen has had heavy duty Sunday callings...which meant I was doing heavy duty baby wrestling. It wasn't pretty on a lot of Sundays and I was defeated on numerous occasions. *But* they all made it to nursery eventually and were dang cute doin' it too. In this new ward Stephen has a...how shall we describe it..."light" calling. As in they took the summer off kind of calling. It's gotta feel completely foreign to him; I know it's weird for me to see him on Sundays...and during the week for that matter. He was NOT the Bishop thank goodness. This sweet little girl is so content to cuddle she allowed us to attend Sunday School and R.S./Priesthood for much longer than the others. But, these last few months she tapped into the family energy and the wrestling commenced. I get to teach the Sunbeams now so was the first baby wrestling experience for Stephen. It was a mild wrestling match, but still entertaining for me.

This last Sunday she was officially over the 18 month mark! I did the whole go with the kid and stay with them for the 2 weeks before they started...ONCE. It backfired so bad when he assumed I was supposed to stay every week we declared never again. Now we wait till 18 months, drop them off, kiss their head and walk away...no crying involved thank you very much. It works SO much better. 

I was helping out at the ASL Branch so Stephen sent me 1st day of nursery pictures of her cuteness I was missing. THAT'S how you know he loves me. Aunt Sassy was there to help him out with the other four. I guess Kenzie was a bit of a wild child during Sacrament so Stephen took her outside for her photo shoot. Those ADORABLE piggy tales are courtesy of Aunt Sassy...Stephen doesn't do hair, combs it, but doesn't do it. ;-) He does make some super cute kids though.

Over the last several crappy financial years as I've worked LOTS more than what our master plan had on it, I've loved that we have picture phones and that Stephen would take cute ones and send them to me. I've missed a substantial portion of Lincoln and Lynneah's baby/little hood, but we managed to beat the stupid bank trying to take our house. I always loved getting a cute picture on break at work...or across town at a different Stake. 

Cute Little Critters...

I'm one of the those mean mom types...and I have kids that completely forget everything they learned during the school year...each big boy has gotten to do homework over the summer. 

They. did. not. like. it.

But it's good for them. I let off for a couple weeks and was a little shaken at how quickly they'd forgotten their beginning of the summer information. Sooooo, back to work they went. Garrett is the master of making it take forever, truly, it's an art. 

While "grading" their papers I found this little gem...

I'm beginning to understand what that cute boy is doing instead of his math. ;-)

When he has lines to follow his handwriting is so nice and neat. As he grows I think it'll become the precise, engineering type, writing that Stephen has. So appropriate since Garrett is Stephen's little mini-me. 

He's got the cutest teacher ever for next year, I'm excited to watch him grow even more with her.